


Switched at Birth

by therunawaypen



Series: Sherlock Tumblr Prompt Fills [36]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Hospitals, Identity Issues, Illnesses, Implied Mpreg, M/M, switched at birth - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-25
Updated: 2014-05-28
Packaged: 2018-01-10 00:54:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1152865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therunawaypen/pseuds/therunawaypen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sebastian and Jim adore their son Alex, so when he becomes ill with an illness requiring a bone marrow transplant, both of them are willing to be donors. But when neither of them are a match, the truth about Alex's identity may come to light.</p><p>Meanwhile, Alex befriends the boy in the hospital bed beside him. One Hamish Watson Holmes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Sherlock prompt: Alex and hamish both born on the same day in the same hospital. Something happens (Can be planned or not) and sherlock and john end up taking alex; jim and sebastian take hamish. They relise they have the wrong children when it is too late. —anon

Alex was 16 when he collapsed. Sebastian had been in the middle of an assignment, so it had been Jim who had found him first. To say that the consulting criminal had taken finding his only son in a crumpled mess on the floor less then well would have been an understatement.

He hadn’t even gotten Alex to the hospital yet before given Sebastian a call, ordering him to return home. Not like Sebastian would have needed the order, Alex was his son as well.

By the time that Sebastian had gotten back to the country and to the hospital, Jim had nearly driving half the doctors there to tears and was terrorizing the rest of them to find a cure for Alex.

“They’re wasting time.” Jim fumed to Sebastian, who was the only one who could keep him under control (somewhat, this was Jim Moriarty, after all).

Sebastian wasn’t stupid, he wasn’t about to give Jim the typical platitudes (“Alex is in good hands  now” “we have to trust the doctors” “everything is going to be fine”), but what he could do was keep Jim busy until someone could tell them what was wrong with their son.

Aplastic anemia.

When Sebastian first heard the diagnoses, he was relieved. He recognized the word anemia, it wasn’t that bad. They would just have to make sure Alex ate more spinach and took iron supplements, right?

The look on Jim’s face said otherwise. “It’s a bone marrow disease, causing a deficiency in all blood cell types, Seb.” He explained flatly, “It requires bone marrow transplants to combat.”

“Alright then, then we have him undergo the transplants.” Seb shrugged, itching for a cigarette, “He’s our boy, I can donate marrow for him.”

Jim had smirked in response. So their boy’s recovery would be complicated, they could deal with that.

Until they were told that neither of them were a bone marrow match.

“Say that again!” Jim seethed, “So help me, I will sk—”

“What my husband means is,” Sebastian cut in, “how are we not a match for Alex?”

The doctor looked over his clipboard once more, probably to keep from looking at them, “Well, you see, the highest chance of a bone marrow match is often with biological family—”

“We’re his _parents_!” Jim screeched, “We _are_ his biological family!”

The doctor blinked, “Oh dear…I think there’s been some misunderstanding…”

Seb didn’t like where this was going…

* * *

 

Alex felt like hell when he finally opened his eyes. Even opening his eyes felt like a colossal effort. And seeing that he was not at home, but in a hospital room, only made it all worse. He groaned.

“I see you’re awake then.”

With great effort, Alex turned his head. There was another teen in the bed next to his, calmly reading a book despite the number of IVs he was hooked up to.

“Wh—”

“If you ask where you are, I will throw this book at you for asking such a stupid question.”

Alex frowned. As if he would be so plebeian, “I was going to ask what you were in for.”

The other teen looked up from his book, “Oh,” he smirked, “Just another one of my father’s experiments gone awry. It happens more often than he likes to admit.”

If he had the strength, he would have laughed, “What happened?”

“I accidently drank the wrong cup of tea. The cup with the poison was intended for my dad.” The other shut his book, looking at Alex, “I should clarify, my father is _not_ trying to kill my dad.”

Deep down, Alex couldn’t help but think his parents would have liked this couple, “Do people often think your father is trying to kill your dad?”

“In the beginning, perhaps.” There was a pause, and then a smirk tugged on the other teen’s lips, “The name’s Hamish Holmes.”

“Alex Moran.”


	2. Chapter 2

  
Alex had asked his dad once why he had decided to fall in love with his father. After all, the two were complete opposites, yet his dad was completely devoted to his father, something that the boy Alex once was found curious.

The answer only confused him.

"It's not like I had a choice." Sebastian had muttered, cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth.

Alex had never understood his dad's answer. Until now.

"Get up."

Blinking his eyes open, it took Alexa moment to realize that he was staring up at the ceiling in his hospital room, and Hamish was shaking him firmly. "What's going on?" He slurred.

Hamish adjusted his thin hospital robe, "I'm bored."

Alex stared at the other teen in disbelief (and slight confusion due to having just woken up). "You woke me up...because you were bored..."

"Yes."

For a brief moment, Alex thought how Hamish reminded Alex of his father, but his need to sleep prevailed, "Can I go back to sleep now? "

"Of course not." Hamish shook his head, "We're going to the morgue."

Now Alex was no stranger to death, gore, and the occasional corpse. His dad had brought work home with him a few times, despite his father's nagging about getting disembodied eyeballs on the mahogany dining table. Alex just never expected to meet someone else who wasn't fazed by death. 

Of course,  by the time Alex finished thinking all this through, Hamish had already brought a wheelchair to Alex's bedside and was in the process of moving Alex whether he wished to be moved or not. And it wasn’t as if Alex had the strength to fight off the other teen.

“You might want to hold on to this.” Hamish muttered, wheeling Alex’s IV stand next to him.

Alex blinked as Hamish wheeled him out of the room, “Where is your IV?”

Hamish shrugged, “I took it out, I hardly need it.”

“You…took it out…” Alex shook his head. That sounded like something his dad would do. “So…the morgue?”

“The morgue.” Hamish nodded, “The security here is quite dreadful, they’re always asleep at this time.”

As Hamish pushed Alex’s wheelchair down the quiet halls of the hospital, Alex couldn’t help but chuckle at just how much time Hamish must have spent in and out of the hospital due to experiments gone wrong. And considering the fact that Hamish had easily swiped a staff ID card to open the morgue door, he could tell that this was not Hamish’s first jaunt down to visit the dead bodies.

A prediction that proved to be all too accurate as Alex sat in his wheelchair, holding onto his IV stand while Hamish looked at each of the storage units. Alex could tell he was looking for one body in particular, and seemed rather pleased when he opened the drawer and slid the body out onto its tray.

“So what’s so special about this one?” Alex found himself asking, trying to wheel himself over, but finding he simply didn’t have the strength.

Hamish looked over at Alex before sighing and wheeling him over to the body himself, “This man reportedly died of a heart attack.”

Alex raised an eyebrow, “But you don’t think so.”

“I have my doubts.” Hamish muttered, examining the body closely, not fazed in the slightest by handling the dead flesh, “I just need to find out how he was killed.”

“If he was poisoned by injection, the coroner would have found the injection marks.” Alex mused, looking the body over.

Hamish sighed, “If you are only going to state the obvious, I highly suggest you shut up.”

“No,” Alex shook his head, “I meant…if you’re looking for an injection, look somewhere the coroner wouldn’t check. Under the fingernails and the nostrils might be a good place to check.”

The other teen raised an eyebrow at Alex before doing as he suggested. It was only on the discovery of the tiny injection hole that Hamish grinned, “Fantastic, murder!”

Alex couldn’t help but smile, glad that walking in on his dad working had finally come in handy. Of course, he decided not to share with Hamish that he knew 17 different ways to kill the man that wouldn’t have raised suspicion.

There was a muted click, and Alex realized that at some point during his musings, Hamish had pulled out a mobile phone from the pockets of his robe and had taken a picture of the puncture wound. Hamish didn’t look at Alex as he typed away at the phone, merely answering, “A client wanted to know what really happened to her uncle.”

Alex raised an eyebrow, watching Hamish, “You didn’t drink that poison on accident, did you?”

Hamish’s only answer was to look Alex in the eye, and smirk.

And in that moment, when Alex could feel his heartrate spike and endorphins surge through him, he finally understood his dad’s words. He had never had a choice when it came to Hamish Holmes, Alex had been snared from the beginning.

 


	3. Chapter 3

It was easy to get access to Alex’s medical records. Well, it was easy for Jim and Sebastian, what with their…combined skill set. The complicated part was figuring out what was wrong. Because contrary to what the doctor’s believed, they knew that they had actually had a son, and not through adoption or surrogacy.

There were no clerical errors to be found, nor where there any misreadings on any of Alex’s tests. But it couldn’t be right, because Alex _was_ their biological son, yet the testing for bone marrow matches had shown _no_ genetic matching.

“What if they mixed up the files.” Sebastian muttered, holding Alex’s old files of his birth, including the tiny footprint taken with black ink

Jim paused, staring at the footprint, “They might have mixed up something worse.”

They needed Alex’s footprint, of course. Which wasn’t all that difficult to get in the middle of the night, what with their normally light sleeper of a son being sedated to the point of being semi-comatose. It was the roommate that was still awake, but he seemed to know better than to ask questions about the two nurses (Jim may or may not have stolen a few uniforms) taking an ink footprint from Alex.

The real shock came they compared the footprints.

“It’s not Alex.” Sebastian blinked, staring at the two images, “That’s not our boy.”

“Then who the hell is he?” Jim was frustrated, understandably so. It wasn’t every day that one found out that the boy you had raised all his life was not the same boy carried and delivered. “We’ll have to look at all the birth records of every boy born at this hospital the same time Alex was born.”

Apparently, there were a lot of little boys born around that time. And Sebastian was going to go blind if he had to look at another footprint.

“It’s this one.” Jim said blandly, looking at another file.

Sebastian rubbed his eyes, “You sure Jim? Need to check the footprint?”

“Don’t need to love, look at the file.” Jim showed Sebastian the name on the file.

 _Well…_ that was a coincidence. “So what do we do?” Sebastian looked at Jim tiredly.

Jim smirked, “Isn’t it obvious? First we get Alex better, then we can focus on getting our other boy back.”

* * *

 

Sherlock Holmes was no stranger to waking up in places he was not supposed to. His years as a cocaine addict had led to several strange encounters. But those years were far behind him.

So when Sherlock opened his eyes, rather sluggishly, to find himself in a hotel bath tub, he was slightly puzzled. Of course, the puzzled part of his brain came from the fact he had obviously been heavily sedated and was causing his mind to run slower than usual.

So he had been sedated, but for what cause? Sherlock tried to sit up, only to feel a sharp pain in his hip. Looking at the offending area, Sherlock realized that: one, he was not wearing any clothes and two, there was a large bandage over his hip.

“Bone marrow, then…at least it wasn’t the kidney.” Sherlock slurred, trying to pull himself from the tub. He needed to find a way to contact John…Of course, it was then he heard the sound of John groaning in the next room, so contacting John would be much easier. “John. John are you awake?”

“Sherlock, what did you do this time?” John snapped, “Where are my _clothes_?”

“That, I can’t answer…” Sherlock stumbled into the bedroom to find John in a similar state he had been in himself, “But I can say with a reasonable amount of certainty that we were drugged and both harvested for bone marrow.”

“Bone…damn it, Sherlock.” John rubbed his face slowly, “I thought it was just tourists that this happened to.”

“Apparently not.” Sherlock shook his head slowly (to avoid a head rush) as he began to look through the drawers of the hotel room to find any clues of what had happened.

All the drawers were empty save for one. Tucked inside where both Sherlock and John’s clothes, and laying on top of the pile of clothing sat a simple card.

_Thanks for the help._


End file.
